Awesome Week

This past week had a lot of things going on it it. All of which were AWESOME, and by awesome I actually really mean that and am not being sarcastic. First up, I got my preceptor assignment for next semester. Our preceptorship is basically a 90 hour internship. Nursing students in the past have had a say in what area or specialty they would like to go into and the faculty would try to match that student up with a nurse in that particular field. This semester however, the faculty made no qualms about letting us know that they were not taking into consideration where you would like to go and "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit". To be honest, I would really prefer to go ANYWHERE but a Med/Surg floor. Since I didn't have a choice in the matter though I decided I was fine going wherever they assigned me since in the end it is only 90 hours of my life, which equates to roughly 11 eight-hour shifts or 9 ten-hour  shifts (as students we aren't allowed to do twelve hour shifts any longer). My biggest concern was that I am obviously birthing a human being halfway into the semester so I was just going to have to hope that my future preceptor would work with me on letting me recover for a week after giving birth and allow me to pump during my shift. 

The first good news came when I got the email that my preceptorship was going to be at a St. Luke's facility, which is where I was really hoping to be placed! Most people get assigned to where their prior clinical experience was, which mine was at St. Alphonsus. Since my job as a research assistant is working with nurses at St. Luke's I am already in their database which explains why I was able to get assigned there. Second good news followed the next day when I found out I was assigned to a lactation consultant at Meridian St. Luke's! I was speechless! So happy I could have cried. Okay,  my eyes may have started to water just a bit from pure joy! My research position has been working with lactation consultants and that is a certification I aim to get not long after becoming an RN. Also the Meridian location is where I will be delivering and ultimately where I would love to end up working. This position could not have been more perfect for me! Or more perfect for my situation of having a baby and having to pump during my shifts :)  I am beyond thrilled and cannot wait for next semester!

The second spectacular news of the week also came in the form of an email when I found out that the abstract paper I submitted to the Western Institute of Nursing conference in Seattle this April was accepted for a poster presentation! I was encouraged to enter the professional portion by the professor I work for, just to see if it would be accepted. If it wasn't then I would just re-enter this January to be part of the student portion so either way I would be presenting, but my professor wanted to see if I could get into the professional portion and  "play with the big girls" as she put it :) Looks like not only will I be playing with the big girls this April, but so will my baby girl (and Matt) since they will be joining me on my Seattle adventure this April!

Third, not to speak of school again, but I finally got a 4.0 this semester and don't mind if I do toot my horn a bit! Toot-ely toot toot.  All previous semesters of nursing school I have had at least one measly B+ that snuck in there dashing my hopes of getting all A's. The "+" was just insulting too since that meant I was painfully close, but not close enough. The funny thing is, this semester I added an extra non-nursing related online class into the mix and it still ended up being my easiest semester to date. Let's hope next semester is just as easy peasy when a baby is added in to the mix! 

Fourth, this past Thursday we went to a "Tacky, Gaudy, Ridiculous Christmas" party a.k.a an ugly sweater party with some of my nursing peeps. Ever since we all started school together two years ago we usually have at least one end-of-school blow out at the close of the semester. It's crazy to think we only have one more semester together before we will be graduating! Throughout our nursing school journey one friend has gotten married, two more have gotten engaged, one's mom has gotten really sick, I had a miscarriage followed by a pregnancy and before the next semester is through I will have a baby in my arms. There's been a lot of changes happening the past twenty four months!  We've laughed a lot, cried a little, and helped each other survive the stress of nursing school! It's going to be bittersweet to graduate and know I won't be seeing these ladies on a weekly basis anymore! 

Halloween 2013

This past Halloween was a lot of fun! Earlier in the week we went over to our friends the Searcy's house and carved pumpkins with them and our friends the Smith's. They have had a pumpkin carving tradition together for lots of years now and we've been lucky enough to partake in the festivities with them the past two years in a row!



 It was so much fun and I laughed harder then I had in a long time! Like "laughing with tears rolling down my cheeks" hard! Annie accidentally cut out the top of a pumpkin that her husband Justin had already cut the bottom out of, only she didn't discover it until it was too late! What she ended up with was a pumpkin donut! Haha it still makes me laugh looking at this picture!

Then on Halloween night we went trick-or-treating at our friends the Turners house for the third year in a row! 

This was all the boys from 2011-the first year we went trick-or-treating at the Turners house. Sawyer was age two and dressed up as a dinosaur. Look how little they all are!

Halloween 2012

Sawyer is the happy snake in the backrow and there are two new additions: Luke-the little superhero in the front and Natalie the flower hanging out in the stroller. Landon and Blake were also here this year, but aren't in the photo. All together we had nine boys and one girl! 

Halloween 2013

Micah and Luke moved to Utah earlier this year so we missed seeing them! Natalie was also here as a chicken, but wasn't into having her photo taken. So on the top row we have Sawyer as Jake the pirate, Braden as a minion from the Despicable Me 2 movie, Ben as a dragon; middle row is Landon as a lion tamer; bottom row is Landon's little brother Blake as his lion, Jesse as a Despicable me 2 character and Cody as a pirate. 

We had dinner at the Turners house first, followed by trick-or-treating around their neighborhood and then we ended the night at our church's Harvest Party. Sawyer was a candy fiend the whole night, scarfing down as many Reese's he could get his sticky, chocolate covered hands on. My friend Mary gave me a great idea earlier in the week on how to get rid of the rest of the candy so that he wasn't feasting on sugar for the next couple weeks. It was genius! When we got home we told him he could take out 10 pieces to save and then if he left the rest of his candy out for Esmerelda the witch then she would leave a present for him in exchange. 

Thankfully he agreed because I had just bought a Jake the Pirate puzzle that morning hoping he would go along with the idea! He was way excited to wake up and see what Esmerelda left him and the puzzle was way better than candy, not to mention that night Matt and I got to go through his stash of candy and pick out our favorites :) 

A couple days after Halloween Sawyer had his first dentist appointment. He was such a champ! The last time Matt and I went to the dentist we brought Sawyer back to watch so he knew what to expect. Our dental hygeinist is awesome and was so good with him. He's been really good about flossing and brushing, although we still have to finish burshing his teeth at the end to make sure he's gotten all his teeth. We stole another idea from our friends the Holbrook's who give each kid a dollar for every year old they are if they come back from the dentist with no cavities. So at the end of his visit Sawyer got four dollars! No cavities (for anyone of us! wahoo!) was good news, but we did find out that Sawyer has a small mouth so his teeth are really crowded together. Given my history of having the same problem and needing spacers, braces and headgear, combined with Matt's history of needing braces AND jaw surgery the news didn't come as a huge surprise. We will probably be taking him to an orthodontist after all his baby teeth come out to see if we can start correcting the problem sooner rather than later. 

And yes, Sawyer likes to rock the Napoleon Dynamite look with the snow boots on. He has been wearing them for a week now. 

The Results Are In!

     

Well, after twenty-one long weeks of waiting, we finally were able to discover the gender of this little in-utero acrobat. Sawyer had daycare and preschool last Tuesday and was going on a trip to the farm to pick out a pumpkin and we had my doctor's appointment that morning at 9 so it was a big day for all of us! At my appointment we had the anatomy ultrasound first, which lasted a whole thirty minutes, which is way longer and thorough then I remember Sawyer's anatomy scan being. The sonographer was so great and communicated every step of the way of what she was looking for. Baby's heartbeat was 159, all four chambers of the heart looked great, the spine was closed (something I was worried about since I wasn't regularly taking my prenatal with folic acid in the beginning due to nausea), both hemispheres of the brain looked good, two kidneys were visible, the diaphragm was in the right spot and ultimately everything looked perfect (insert audible sigh of relief!). 

In the very beginning of the ultrasound this is how our baby made it's first impression..... digging for gold in it's nose! Then we couldn't help but notice immediately afterwards that hand went directly to it's mouth. Hahaha so classy. 

 After about 25 minutes of identifying parts and measuring them, we finally moved on to see what kind of goods this baby was sportin'. I had been looking for boy parts the whole time, but the 

sonographer moved so quickly and the images were hard to decipher so I hadn't seen anything definite yet. I had mentioned beforehand that we already had a four year old son and that I was pretty certain this baby was a boy too. In fact the night before I had a super restless night of sleep filled with at least ten or so dreams that we were having a boy. So....you can imagine my surprise when she said "Well, looks like your son is going to have a little sister" and wrote "It's a girl!" on the photo below. 

 WHAT?!! 

I was (and still am) in shock!! 

I immediately got all teary and had to be given a tissue. No, not teary out of disappointment, but out of pure happiness! I guess deep, deep down somewhere I wanted a girl??? Maybe because I know this is our last baby? I even surprised myself with my emotional reaction. Matt then confessed he had a hunch the whole time it was a girl. Sneaky sneakster never even once mentioned that to me! He said he thought we would end up following in the steps of both my brother and sister who have had a boy followed by a girl. Also a bunch of my cousins who are pregnant right now too all happen to be having girls as well! Looks like they come in waves! 

I had a bunch of people that morning texting me asking me what the gender was, but I wanted to do something fun to announce it so we hurried home and I set these pumpkins up to deliver the message. 

When we picked Sawyer up from daycare we asked him if he wanted the baby to be a boy or a girl and he said "A grill. Because then we will have two mommy's and two daddy's in our family", apparently he wants an even ratio of boys and girls in the fam! So the little dude got his wish of a baby sister! 

The next day at school my friends surprised me with a "It's a girl" balloon, card and gift bag with her first two outfits and socks. Let the influx of pink begin! May I present to you her future homecoming outfit....

We have her first name picked out, but are still settling on the middle name, although we have a few contenders. Her first name is one syllable so I wanted a three syllable middle name so that she has 7 syllables in her full name just like Matt, Sawyer and I do.  I also didn't want to have a middle name ending in -y, -i or -e because I thought it sounded too sing-songy with our last name ending in -i, but it has been super difficult to find a middle name we both like that falls within those guidelines so it looks like I'm going to have to let one or both of those requirements go! Oh well, we have another nineteen weeks to figure it out! 

I keep looking at the ultrasound photo on our fridge of the VERY visible three lines that depict there's a female baking away in there and just laugh because I still can't quite believe we are going to be parents of a little girl!! Eeeek! Somebody pinch me! :) 

Half Way

Here is my 19.5 week belly in all it's glory. I've been feeling the baby kick a lot lately, but Matt and Sawyer have yet to feel it from the outside. 

And just for comparison I went back to our blog in 2009 and pulled this photo up, which was my first belly shot of Sawyer when I was approximately 21 weeks. 

One more week until we find out the gender! I can't wait since I'm dying to do some spring  fall cleaning and would like to know whether to keep or give away some of this little boy's things from when he was a baby. 

Speaking of the little boy, I haven't been very good about documenting all the funny things his four year old self has been doing. I finally figured out how he says "Really" which he says often. He says it exactly like "Whirly" for example: "Mom, I whirly want a waffle for breakfast" or "I whirly like riding my bike", both of which are true statements. 

He has always been good about playing by himself which has been nice for us, but now he is more vocal about what he is playing so we get to be in on it even from another room. His imagination is going wild and he does all sorts of animated voices which are hilarious to hear. He also has been wanting mom, dad, grandma or grandpa to play zombie or bad guys with him, the first of which involves chasing him around with your arms outstretched saying "Braaaaains" or chasing him around with a gun and pretending to shoot each other. I usually tell him that daddy is better at playing those games than mommy :) 

He still wants to be picked up by me a lot, which I just can't do anymore. I will however give him 'piggy' rides so he likes to climb on my back like a monkey and be carried upstairs that way or whenever his legs are tired like in the photo below on a hike with friends. 

He is really into riding his bike around the block which is good for me to be able to go on a walk. We went this morning and it was definitely a mitten kind of day already! Our nieghborhood has been booming with new construction so it's fun to go around to see what houses are being built and walk through them. 

We ventured out to the field by our house this past week to look at the trains, which is the first time we have been down there since last fall! We usually go for walks in the field quite a bit in the summer, but this past summer I barely made it out of the house on a good day let alone on a walk down to the field. Poor Sawyer, didn't get much of a summer and neither did Matt for that matter. Hopefully we will make up for it next year! Only with a new baby in tow. 

Sawyer wanted to snap a photo of me with my phone and actually did pretty good considering my head is in this one. 

 This balloon on his bike is still going strong. He has had it since before his birthday, so almost two weeks and it is barely starting to droop. It's going to be a sad day when the balloon bites the dust since it has been his trusty bike companion since he got it. 

 Yesterday we went to the Farmstead in Meridian with Matt's Aunt Rosie and Uncle Steve who moved here this summer. We haven't been to the Farmstead since my younger brother Bryson worked there before he went on his mission two years ago.  Coincidentally he comes back in a little over a week from now! I remember thinking when he left that when he got back I would only have one semester left of nursing school and Sawyer would be four years old. That sounded like such a long ways out at the time, but now we are already there! 

And just because it's super gross, here is a house by Rosie and Steve's that geared their Halloween decorations this year towards arachnophobics. Um, yes that would be me. Look at the mommy spider with all her nasty babies trailing behind her....ugh makes me feel all creeped out just looking at it. 

We have a 4 year old?!

 We celebrated Sawyer's fourth birthday this past Tuesday. My mom recently found my baby book and gave it to me and in going through it I realized that I totally remember my 4th birthday! Not any birthday before that, but I definitely remember my barbie cake and my friends coming on the day I turned 4 which meant Sawyer was going to remember this birthday! No pressure! 

The day before we went to Chik Filet with my friend Rachel and her little girl Ivory. Sawyer and Ivory share the same exact birthday and for that reason Ivory is pretty convinced they are going to get married one day. They have a lot of fun together and it's cute to watch them interact. 

Later that day my parents went with me to pick up the full mattress that we purchased the past weekend for Sawyer's room. We decided to move his twin bed into the baby's room for when guests are over and now Sawyer has a nicer and bigger bed that he can hopefully have until he is at least a teenager! Monday night he went to bed late and I had to wake him up pretty early Tuesday morning to get ready for daycare and preschool. I made him Star Wars spaceship french toast and hot cocoa for his birthday breakfast, but he was so out of it I don't think he even noticed! 

I had a doctor's appointment that morning at a new office with a new doctor. I switched doctor's because the one I was seeing only delivers at the downtown St. Lukes and I would really like to deliver at the Meridian location which is closer to where we live. Sawyer's birth, from first measly contraction to being born, was a total of 12 hours.  I think this one will be a lot faster so I'd rather be delivering at a nearby hospital! When I went for my appointment they used the doppler to get the baby's heartbeat and couldn't find it. For around 3 or 4 minutes (which felt like an eternity at the time) the doctor moved the doppler every which way on my abdomen and could find my hearbeat, but not the baby's. I was starting to get nervous and I think he may have been too so he suggested we do a really quick ultrasound. I was thinking if anything were to be wrong with the baby, what a horrible day for it to be on since it was Sawyer's birthday and we had a party with family planned for later that night! Thankfully, with the ultrasound I got to see the baby and it had a healthy heart rate of 158 so I was able to breath a sigh of relief. The ultrasound tech even printed out a photo of the baby's head for me which was really nice. Unfortunately, we didn't get to any other parts besides the head and my anatomy scan had to be rescheduled for a whole week later then it was originally since I'm with a new doctor. We won't find out whether this one is a he or a she until October 22nd which seems like forever away!  

After my appointment I picked up Sawyer's birthday treat of choice from Krispy Kreme to take to preschool. He was very specific in that he wanted, "Donuts with chocolate icing and colored sprinkles". 

When I got to his preschool all the kids were sitting in a circle and the teacher had Sawyer come up in front so she could put a birthday crown on him and then all the kids in their little voices sang him happy birthday. Talk about torture for a pregnant lady!! It was so dang cute I was trying my hardest not to cry!! I'm not usually sentimental like that so it took me by surprise how emotional I felt about my baby turning four! 

The kids were beyond excited to get to wear the Krispy Kreme hats. 

That night at seven we had his Zombie birthday party. A few weeks earlier when he had nailed down a Zombie theme I had found this super fun blog with great ideas about throwing a Zombie party minus  the blood and gore. I basically took all the ideas from that! I got all the decorations from the dollar store and spent a little over $20 for everything. Not too shabby! We decided on only inviting family instead of doing a friend birthday. I think we will do one of those next year. 

We got some dry ice at the grocery store earlier that day and it was pretty cool! Sawyer and Matt and my grandpa were having lots of fun blowing into the bowl to make the smoke go everywhere. 

We had some BRAINS cupcakes that Megan and Kevin had found at Toys R' Us and bought for Sawyer's party, some lemon-lime punch with sprite, chocolate eyeball candies and popcorn boxes filled with white chocolate covered popcorn and m & m's. 

We sang him happy birthday, he blew out his four candles (FOUR!!! I'm still in disbelief), we ate treats and then he opened up his presents. And oh yes, switched to another one of his crowns somewhere in between. 

That night he crashed into his new bed after playing with ALL of his new presents. He changed into the BSU sweats from my parents, shot his cap fun for a while that we gave him, put the money in his bank from Aunt Linda and John, traced numbers in the book from my grandparents, put 3 of the 5 Disney puzzles together from Rosie and Steve, and then stayed up super late watching Matt put together his Lego truck from his nana Carol. So much for saving some of the new things to play with the next day! At the end of the day when I was tucking him in he said "Thanks mommy for bringing donuts to my preschool and setting up a Zombie table for me". What more can you ask for?!

Too Funny Not to Document

This morning I had a meeting with the professor I am a research assistant for. I got up at 6:30, ate breakfast, dropped Sawyer off at my parent's house for my mom to watch and then arrived at school for my 9 am appointment to go over an abstract I wrote for an upcoming conference. During our hour long meeting I started to feel kind of nauseated and realized I probably should eat something soon. I was planning on heading over to Starbucks to spend another few hours completing school and work assignments, but on the way I realized I needed to eat something STAT and Starbucks was too far away so I pulled into a nearby McDonald's drive through just in time before their breakfast ended at 10:30. Remember how I said I have been on a McMuffin kick? No surprise that I ordered the usual breakfast of sausage egg McMuffin, orange juice and hashbrown and before I even left the drive through I started chowing down on the hash brown. Took a sip of orange juice and not even two minutes later I realized something that hasn't happened in a few weeks was totally going to happen. At. Any. Minute. I was headed towards the freeway, but thankfully found a side street before the on ramp and quickly tried to maneuver into a parking lot, but before I could even pull into a space it HAPPENED. I threw up. All. Over. Myself. My sweater, my pants, the seat. I don't know who was more surprised, myself or the person that saw me pulling into the parking lot. Oh yes and did I mention I am driving a rental car?!! Our CR-V has been in the shop getting rock chips repaired so in the meantime I have been driving a rental car for the past two weeks. And one with fabric seats. The driver seat of which was now covered in my partially digested breakfast from earlier and a hashbrown. Siiiiiiiiiick. I called my mom who wasn't expecting me to come back to pick up Sawyer for another few hours. Laughing at the ridiculousness of my predicament I explained my situation and told her I was coming back early. That was quite a long drive back. I feel bad for the people in trucks or taller cars than mine that had to see a lady covered in vomit driving next to them. Once I got to my moms she came out with a wet rag, a roll of papertowels and a garbage bag to help me clean up myself and the rental car. I bet she never thought she would be having to clean up her 29 year old daughters throw up! Then she gave me some clothes to change into and washed my current outfit. Thanks a million Mom!!! I hope this baby appreciates me later as much as I appreciated you today!

UP

Things are looking UP. 

On Friday I decided to go Unisom free again to see how I would feel the next day. I just completed my second week of school and really didn't want to try this little experiment on a school night or even a night that I needed to watch Sawyer solo the next day in case we had a repeat experience like the last time I skipped the Unisom. But surprisingly the next morning I felt...A-okay! Which lasted all the way until the afternoon when I started to feel crummy again, but nothing like before and nothing that wasn't manageable. So for three days now I have been both Zofran AND Unisom free!! Hip hip hooray!! It's been a little over two months since I have been on this nausea medication regimen and it feels great to finally be done with that phase! Now, instead of nausea I am just ridiculously hungry at all times :) Which I will gladly take! It seems like anything I eat gets instantaneously gobbled up by the baby and I am famished again in mere minutes. It's kind of funny how often I have said to Matt "I'm starving! I need to eat (again) right. now." which unfortunately means that we have eaten out quite a bit the last week. Some of my excursions have been to get the tomato basil soup at Noodles, shredded pork salad from Cafe Rio, and I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I may or may not have had a sausage McMuffin for breakfast (or second breakfast) three times in the past week and a half. Man, their orange juice there is good too. Orange juice has been my one sustaining craving from the first trimester until now. Mmmm, so delicious.

Lately we have also been on an UP movie binge. That movie is hilarious. I love all the characters: Kevin the bird, Russell the kid, Doug the dog. Last year we missed the hot air balloon take off in Boise so I wanted to be sure we went this year, especially after watching UP I knew Sawyer would really be into watching all the balloons. We went early Saturday morning the day it was scheduled and found a seat on the grass right where they launched. It was pretty cool to watch. Sawyer was quiet the whole time, a sure sign his attention was captivated!

 I posted the photo below on Instagram with the caption "Really wanted to hitch a ride on one of them to Paradise Falls, #kevinandherbabies, #adventureisoutthere, #cawcawrawr" hoping my fellow Instagrammers would know what movie I was referring to.